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Reasonable Gun Control (Is It Common-Sense, Or
Sensible?) by Randall N. Herrst, President The anti-self-defense groups love to talk about "common sense or
reasonable" gun control. They use those phrases as though the concept of
gun control laws aimed at law-abiding citizens is inherently and immutably
"reasonable". Why? "It just feels right." We should develop
a set of criteria for "reasonable" and "common sense" so
that we can take over their terminology and use it to educate the voters. If
enough people on our side turned this against them, they would stop using it.
The beauty is that gun control is inherently unreasonable, so our criteria will
make a lot of sense to many people. Few people would disagree with our criteria
once they have been explained. Primary Points 1. A reasonable law must target violent criminals, rather than
law-abiding citizens. Mothers Against Drunk Driving has succeeded by targeting the dangerous
criminals, rather than going after all drivers or trying to ban certain types
of cars. Any burden on law-abiding citizens must be legally "de minimus;"
the least burdensome or restrictive way to accomplish the purposes of the law.
Criminal laws aimed at the general population are inherently too weak to
affect the criminals. 2. Any proposed firearms legislation must have a historical track
record of reducing violent crime in some U.S. jurisdiction, without adversely
affecting the law-abiding citizens' basic human right of self-defense. If the proposed law has never previously been tried anywhere in the U.S.,
it must meet all 6 of the other criteria listed here, and it must
automatically sunset, without possibility of automatic renewal, within 3
years. Renewal would only be allowed after thorough review and legislative
debate to determine whether that law by itself had significantly reduced crime
in that jurisdiction compared to all other demographically similar
jurisdictions. 3. Any reasonable law would incorporate built-in, nearly automatic
exceptions which would allow anyone who is under immediate physical threat to
swear to that fact under penalty of perjury and obtain a waiver of any waiting
periods, safety testing, residency requirements, and other routine requirements,
pending a resolution of their situation. No law can be reasonable or common-sense if it endangers or handicaps those
who are most in need of protection while it only deals effectively with
routine situations. It makes far more sense to design a law to be most
efficient in dealing with the most serious life-or-death situations, not the
routine or trivial ones. 4. Any reasonable, common-sense law must be designed to work in
conjunction with the fact that the police are not legally responsible for our
protection and cannot be held liable for failure to protect us. There is no jurisdiction in the U.S. where a citizen can hold the police
liable for failure to protect them, which means that ultimately, each person is responsible for their own
protection and the protection of their loved ones. 5. A reasonable law must have a favorable cost-to-benefit ratio;
otherwise the wasted resources could have had a greater crime control effect if
applied elsewhere. Policies which expend huge amounts of money while producing minimal
crime-reducing results should be repealed and replaced with programs that are
known to work. Wasted resources allow crime to flourish. Consider the billions
of dollars that it would take to strictly enforce the existing gun laws and
throw millions of firearms owners in prison ($35,000 per year for each
prisoner). How much crime would be prevented? Or would it increase violent
crime, as so many other gun control laws have done? 6. None of the subsections of an otherwise reasonable law would be
designed to gratuitously target, handicap, or burden the average law-abiding
firearms owner. It is not reasonable or acceptable to tack on an unrelated clause or
subsection which is designed to, or which has the effect of burdening or
handicapping non-violent firearms owners. 7. Any reasonable, common-sense law would automatically sunset after
5 years if it has not produced significant reductions in violent crime. If the law is not doing the job it was intended to do, it makes no sense to
retain its restrictions and impediments on the natural right of self-defense
or other legitimate uses of firearms, no matter how minor those restrictions
might be. Laws should never impose restrictions or burdens just for the sake
of having restrictions and burdens; they should have a purpose and an
empirical effect if they are to be considered reasonable. Copyright © 2001, The Center For The Study Of Crime. Related Reading Reasonable
Gun Control?
It’s
amazing what one has to believe to believe in gun control.
The
“Unregulated” Gun
The
Folly of Common Sense Gun
Laws Can Be Dangerous, Too. Sensible
Gun Laws |
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